Question:
Answer:
First, the age of the patriarchs begins with Genesis 12, encompassing the lives and descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and is understood to be historical. In contrast, Genesis 7:11 is part of Genesis 1-11, which presents a different literary form. As Dr. Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch summarize on page 15 of The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Genesis,
All things considered, then, Genesis 1—11 may be regarded as historical in substance but mythopoeic in expression. Its narrative is anchored in realities and events of the past, and yet its description of those events makes use of the poetic symbolism and figurative modes of speech that once had a broad currency in biblical times.
So the historical period of Genesis 1—11 is definitely not viewed as simply metaphorical (see CCC 390).
Here is Genesis 7:11 in the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE ), which is used for the scriptural citations in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC):
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
We can reasonably conclude that the author of Genesis is employing literary flair at least in part in Genesis 7:11, namely, regarding Noah’s age (600), which like other biblical figures, including Adam (935 [Gen. 5:5]) and Methuselah (969 [Gen. 5:27]), strikes us in modern times as being hard to take as strictly historical. As Dr. Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch state on page 25 of The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: Genesis,
Perhaps the best hypothesis, and one that would help to explain both the biblical and Near Eastern data, is that giving primeval figures extremely long lives was a way of conceptualizing the great antiquity of mankind. In other words, this may be simply a literary technique used to assert the remarkable age of the human race itself.
In addition, in speaking of “the fountains of the deep” bursting forth from the ground, we know that the author is speaking phenomenologically, i.e., based on his primitive understanding of the workings of the world as he observed and understood them, not an attempt to teach strict science under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.